America’s Legacy of Help and Hope Through Food Assistance
70 years after the Marshall Plan, delivering food is still essential to rebuilding after crisis and preventing conflict
On this day seven decades ago, George C. Marshall delivered a speech to the graduating class of Harvard University that called for a comprehensive program to help a ravaged Europe recover and rebuild from World War II. The war had ended, but millions lived amid rubble, economies were bankrupt and people did not have enough to eat.
“The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”
— George Marshall
This year, we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan’s implementation, which provided $13 billion (about $140 billion today) in assistance to 16 countries, mostly by providing food. Food was given to workers who helped revive economies, as well as to seriously undernourished families.
Thanks in part to the Marshall Plan, European nations successfully stabilized and resisted communism. Today, European nations are essential partners in humanitarian assistance, helping others around the world in the same way they once received aid from America.
The threat of hunger and instability continue to plague the world, albeit in different places. Earlier this year, I testified before Congress on why food assistance still matters, and the answer is two-fold.
First, feeding those who are in need and suffering is the right thing to do and represents our core American values of compassion and generosity.
Second, it makes America and her allies safer because hunger and conflict are intertwined. Where hunger persists, instability grows. The opposite is also true: where conflict occurs, hunger follows. The UN Security Council recently agreed — they issued a resolution in May that linked armed conflict and violence to food insecurity and the risk of famine.
How Hunger Leads to Conflict
When parents come home with empty pockets and children go to school with empty stomachs, hungry people can quickly become angry people.
Events over the last decade demonstrate that acute hunger can trigger political instability. In 2008, food prices spiked and sparked riots and street demonstrations in more than 40 countries around the world, toppling governments in Haiti and Madagascar.
In 2010, the first signs of the Arab Spring were riots in the streets of Tunisia over dramatic increases in food prices.
Today, Venezuela is experiencing an economic crisis, creating severe food shortages and driving 1.8 million people to flee the country since 2014.
USAID tries to prevent crises like these from happening by working with vulnerable people, particularly women and youth, to create or find work and sustainably feed themselves and their families. Like in post-WWII Europe, food security helps ensure global stability and prosperity.
How Conflict Leads to Hunger
Conflict causes enormous social and economic devastation, and hunger is one of its first symptoms.
It prevents farmers from planting and harvesting crops, robbing them of their livelihoods and later robbing others of food to eat. Conflict prevents people from traveling to and from markets, making the food that is available inaccessible. At the same time, conflict makes it difficult for life-saving help to reach those who need it.
We see conflict-caused hunger today in places like Yemen, Syria, Burma and South Sudan.
Of the 815 million hungry people in the world, half live in countries affected by conflict. Hunger driven by conflict forces millions of people to face a difficult choice: Stay where they are and starve, or leave their families and friends behind and head into unknown danger to find food.
We provide food to those who need it, whether they are on the frontlines of conflict-affected countries or refugees beyond those borders. We also help vulnerable families in communities hosting refugees in neighboring countries. Last year, 66 percent of our emergency food assistance funding went towards helping people in just six countries — South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria — nearly all conflict-related. The same will be true this year because conflict still rages on, so the food situation has not gotten any better.
In too many places around the world — like Yemen or South Sudan — humanitarian assistance will be a primary determinant of whether famine is averted.
As World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley says, “To end hunger, we need to end conflict.”
USAID and its allies continue to work toward a world where parents do not worry about their children going to bed hungry. A world that is stable enough to ward off future conflict and whose prosperity opens new markets for U.S. exports and trade.
For now, when people fleeing or recovering from conflict see our USAID logo on their food parcels or vouchers, they know that America cares.
About the Author
Matt Nims is the acting director for USAID’s office of Food for Peace. Follow Food for Peace at @USAIDFFP.
